Argumenthood and English prepositional phrase attachment

Two self-paced reading experiments are presented to assess how temporary ambiguities in prepositional phrase attachment are resolved in English verb-noun-phrase-prepositional-phrase sequences. The hypothesis tested is a preference to maximize argument relations, in contrast to an overall verb phrase attachment preference (cf. Minimal Attachment). Five syntactic argumenthood diagnostics were used to construct noun phrase argument and verb phrase modifier completions of sentences, differing by one word and controlled for frequency. It was found that (1) noun phrase argument completions were read significantly faster in the disambiguating region and (2) unambiguous verb phrase modifiers were read as quickly as noun phrase arguments and faster than ambiguous verb phrase modifiers. These results suggest that argument relations are maximized in initial comprehension of the target ambiguity. Alternative potential explanations for the findings are evaluated, including a recency-based account and a lexical-frequency treatment. (C) 1999 Academic Press.